Giving Is Gaining Momentum

The Giving Tuesday movement has been gradually gaining strength since its inception.

In 2015, a survey showed that 93 percent of Americans were familiar with Black Friday while only 18 percent had ever heard of Giving Tuesday.

However, in that same year, the movement received a boost when Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife announced their intention to donate 99 percent of their wealth to their newly formed Chan Zuckerberg initiative on Giving Tuesday.

In 2016, Giving Tuesday broke a new record with $168 million in donations worldwide, an increase of 44 percent from the prior year.

In 2017, this upward trend continued, fueled by Facebook and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation who announced they would match $2 million in donations for Giving Tuesday fundraisers on Facebook.

A whopping $45 million was raised by nonprofits through Facebook on that day, placing the sum well above the $2 million matching limit.

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Rosane Oliveira, DVM, PhD

Rosane Oliveira, DVM, PhD is Founding Director of UC Davis Integrative Medicine and Adjunct Assistant Professor at the Department of Public Health Sciences at the School of Medicine at the University of California Davis. Blending a life-long passion for food and nutrition with over 20 years of scientific experience in genetic research, Dr. Oliveira is devoted to educating people about how food and lifestyle choices can affect genetic expression–i.e. how genes are turned on and off and either cause disease or promote health. She is a native of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and has lived in the US since 2003.